In a recent podcast of Stuff You Never Ever Learned At the Academy, a veteran cup told a rookie why he should always look up at the scene of a suicide.
Now, we’re going to tell you why you should always look down when you’re either an undercover vice cop or part of a raid at a so-called ‘sex arcade’.
A sex arcade is an establishment catering to every pervert’s dreams of complete and total sexual freedom, and many times it takes the term ‘anything goes’ and stretches it to virtually surreal proportions.
In his excellent book, “We Are the Cops” Author Michael Matthews documents the war stories of officers nationwide after he had joined them on ride-alongs from sea to shining sea.
In his section on VICE, he tells one young cop’s story of the first time he’d been sent into an adult bookstore.
“When you first go up, usually you were horrified, and I certainly was” he said.”Because honestly, I had no idea what went on in these adult bookstores. These little arcades and these little theaters.”
“I had to go and work with a group of old timers who had been in Vice forever. And they’re giving me advice like ‘Okay, kid, listen, don’t sit down in any of the chairs because obviously you’ve got a lot of different people coming and going, and they’re either by themselves or with someone else and they’re masturbating or they’re engaged in sex acts'”.
“The advice not to sit down was easy to figure out. I didn’t want to sit in somebody else’s problem or biohazard or fluids.”
“And then they tell you ‘Okay, if you stand by the wall, certain people are going to come up to you because that’s like a sign for certain people, and they’re going to come up and they might be well doing things.
“And I’m like ‘Good grief! What am I getting myself into?’
“Obviously I have my radio and transmitter, so I get in there, I pay. I go through into the theater and it’s unbelievable. It’s Sodom and Gomorrah going on in there. Literally! There’s guys sitting in seats masturbating, two guys on the wall playing with each other, one guy giving oral sex to another guy. There’s a young gangbanger with a bandanna and flannel shirt looking like a tough guy who is engaged in anal sex with an old man who had a nun’s habit on!
“Mind you, this was my first time in there…early in my career. You’re trying to remember each person and what they’re doing, so that later you can either cite them or arrest them.
“I’ve got probably 15 different sex acts on seven or eight different people, you know? And they’re intermingling and changing around.
“I give the bust signal, but vice isn’t coming in. No response. Zip, nada, zero. And now I see what I’d call zombies following me, trying to, you know, because you’re fresh meat, they may have their pants down or they’re trying to make a motion to you.
“The normal reaction of a cop is gonna be: ‘Get the hell away from me.’ It had to look kind of funny, like a choreographed dance. I’m trying to stay away from these people yet stay close enough to see what’s going on.
“I’m probably in there 10 minutes longer than I had to be dodging these guys coming at me from all directions.
“Long story short, Vice was not coming in on the bust signal as a kind of joke, a rite of passage.
“Ha-ha-ha, you know. But that was just one example of the ‘bookstores, and there’s so many more’.
So, as you can see for a cop, there are definitely those times to look up and those times where one must absolutely…LOOK DOWN!
Have you ever done a turn in vice? If so, what AD-VICE would you give another cop who is in his or her first days visiting the local adult bookstore or arcade?
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And that’s Stuff You Never Ever Learned At the Academy from In the Line of Duty.